A torpedo from a PT boat should not have been able to hit her. In the pre-dawn darkness of October 25, 1944, as Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima's flotilla entered the Surigao Strait during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Lieutenant (jg) Mike Kovar's PT-137 fired a torpedo at a Japanese destroyer. The torpedo ran deep, passed beneath its target, and struck the light cruiser Abukuma instead, hitting near the number one boiler room and killing 37 crewmen. It was a freak shot, an accident of depth and trajectory -- and it set in motion the final chapter of a warship that had been present at Pearl Harbor, had sailed to the Aleutians, the Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific, and would sink the following day off Negros Island with 250 of her crew.
Abukuma was the sixth and last of the Nagara-class light cruisers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy, authorized under the 8-4 Fleet Program in 1920 and constructed at the Uraga Dock Company. She was named for the Abukuma River in Japan's Tohoku region, following the naval tradition of naming light cruisers after rivers. Designed as a destroyer flotilla flagship, she displaced approximately 5,500 tons and was fitted with 140mm guns, torpedo launchers, and -- crucially -- the devastating Type 93 "Long Lance" torpedoes, oxygen-powered weapons with a range and destructive power that no Allied torpedo could match. Between refits in 1929 and 1941, her armament was repeatedly upgraded: anti-aircraft guns added, torpedo launchers replaced, radar eventually installed. By July 1944, she bristled with thirty 25mm and ten 13mm anti-aircraft guns -- a floating hedgehog of firepower reflecting the increasingly desperate air defense needs of the late war.
Abukuma's war began on November 26, 1941, when she sailed from Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands as flagship of Destroyer Squadron 1, part of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's Carrier Striking Force heading for Pearl Harbor. After the attack, her operational range was astonishing: escorting invasion fleets to Rabaul and Kavieng in January 1942, pursuing American carrier forces in the Marshall Islands, accompanying strikes on Port Darwin in Australia, and raiding across the Indian Ocean from Java to Ceylon. By May 1942, she was reassigned to the Northern Force for the invasion of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands -- a theater as different from the tropical Pacific as any naval officer could imagine, all fog and cold water and supply convoys to isolated garrisons.
On March 26, 1943, Abukuma fought in the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, firing 95 rounds from her 140mm guns and four torpedoes during an engagement that ended in embarrassment for the Japanese Fifth Fleet. Vice Admiral Boshiro Hosogaya, outgunned but not outfought by a weaker American force, chose to withdraw rather than risk further damage after the heavy cruiser in his fleet was badly hit. Hosogaya was forced into retirement -- a reminder that in the Imperial Japanese Navy, discretion was not valued over valor. Abukuma was undamaged but returned to Maizuru Naval Arsenal for a refit that included the installation of air-search radar. In July 1943, she supported the evacuation of Kiska, a rare Japanese success in the Aleutians. On July 26, a patrol vessel collided with her starboard quarter, causing minor damage -- the kind of routine accident that accumulates in the life of any warship that spends years at sea.
After the accidental torpedo hit from PT-137 in the early hours of October 25, 1944, Abukuma's crew fought to save their ship. Emergency repairs got her moving again, and by 04:45 she was making 20 knots. By 05:35 she had caught up to the rest of Shima's flotilla. But she was down at the bow and shipping at least 500 tons of seawater. At 08:30, she was ordered to Dapitan for repairs, escorted by the destroyer Ushio. The next day, October 26, Abukuma and Ushio departed Dapitan for Coron, Palawan. American B-24 Liberator bombers found them. At 10:06, a direct hit struck near the number three gun mount. At 10:20, two more bombs hit further aft, starting fires that spread to the engine rooms and torpedo rooms. At 10:37, four Long Lance torpedoes in the aft torpedo room detonated. The crew abandoned ship between noon and 12:30. At 12:42, Abukuma sank by the stern off Negros Island, taking 250 men with her. Ushio rescued the captain and 283 crewmen. On December 20, 1944, Abukuma was struck from the Navy List.
The sinking site of the Japanese cruiser Abukuma lies at approximately 9.33N, 122.53E off Negros Island in the Sulu Sea / Mindanao Sea area. The nearest significant airports are Dumaguete-Sibulan Airport (RPVD) on Negros, approximately 60 km to the east, and Bacolod-Silay Airport (RPVS) further north on Negros. From altitude, the waters between Negros, Panay, and the Sulu Sea are where the ship went down during the aftermath of the Battle of Surigao Strait. The city of Dapitan on the Mindanao coast, where Abukuma briefly stopped for emergency repairs, is visible to the south. This area was a major naval combat zone during the October 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf.